


take me out and take me home

by thelilacfield



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (It is mostly compliant except Vision is resurrected), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-12 02:22:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20556638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelilacfield/pseuds/thelilacfield
Summary: Vision has always seen in colour.A journey through a world where you see in black and white before you meet your soulmate. And return to monochrome if you lose them.





	take me out and take me home

**A/N:** Can there ever be enough soulmate AUs? I think not. My tumblr is [here](https://mximoffromanoff.tumblr.com/) should anyone want to come chat about scarletvision, I'm always open!

* * *

Vision has always seen in colour.

Even before he came to consciousness, when he was a stone and a body and a floating intelligence searching for an anchor, there was _colour_. It was shadow and light, and he understood it, processed each shade with his new mind. He knew the strange blinking lights in Stark Tower, mind telling him they were named red and blue and green, and he looked at the colours of the people. The red of the scarf tangled around Ms. Maximoff's neck and shoulders, the different red of the jacket she wore later, and the green of her eyes when they found his in the falling train.

It wasn't until later that he learned what colour meant. The world is black and white until you meet your soulmate, and when known public figures see colour it's something worth reporting. He finds out that Mr. Stark kept it hidden for years that he saw colour when he met Ms. Potts, that Captain Rogers went into the ice in a bright world and came out to one of fading pastel as Ms. Carter's health declines, that Ms. Romanoff is always tight-lipped about whether she sees colour or not, that Colonel Rhodes only know his once-partner is alive because he still sees colour.

His world is colour, and he doesn't hide that. He sees the blue of the sky, the green of the grass, the red of Ms. Maximoff's lipstick. It shortens any debate on who he is, _what _he is - if he sees colour, he has a soul. One matched perfectly with another out there, and he tries to understand why he saw colour before he existed, before the lightning shocked life into his veins. If one of the group who saw him born is his soulmate, he still shouldn't have seen colour until they were in the same room.

Late at night, when no one else is awake, he finds the videos that are splashed all over the Internet of soulmate meeting for the first time. Careful editing is done to match the perfect moment when two people lock eyes and see in colour for the first time, and he feels a lump in his throat watching footage of two young women getting married in the brightest colours he's even seen, this celebrating of matching souls. He'll never have the true moment of knowing, the glance up accompanied by tears he sees in another video of someone being brought together with their soulmate in a coffeeshop. He even watches the interview where Mr. Stark publicly announced that Ms. Potts was his soulmate after years of publicly denying he saw colour, and their soft smiles and happy eyes leave him raw. He wants that with someone.

A soft knock on the door, and he closes his laptop and opens the door to Wanda. The green of her eyes and the pale scatter of her freckles, and he notes the deep blue of her pyjamas, the white stripes, and then the redness that rims her eyes, the blotching on her nose and cheeks. She's been crying. "I can't sleep," she says softly, twisting at one of the tiny pearlescent buttons on her shirt. "Can I sit up with you?"

"Of course, Ms. Maximoff," he says, moving aside to let her in. She looks so vulnerable in pyjamas, hair in braids, young and lost and sad.

"Please just call me Wanda," she says, and he ducks his head, embarrassed that she has to ask again. "Can I borrow a blanket?" His stack are folded neatly on his desk chair, all bought at the recent trip Ms. Romanoff took them on in her excitement at the new compound, and he reaches for the top one before she says, "Not that one. The navy one."

He pulls out the particular blanket, velvety navy material that matches her pyjamas, and asks, "So you see colour?"

"I do," she says quietly, and there's a heaviness in her voice. He wonders if somehow the source of the colour was her brother, platonic soulmates have been proven to be viable thought he's never heard of family soulmates, but that wouldn't make sense. She would see in black and white now.

He wants to ask so badly, to find out who it was that brought her colour, to know the story behind the magical moment of black and white bursting into brightness, but something about the look in her eyes stops him. He just returns to his laptop, another article of someone writing up their joy at meeting their soulmate and describing the colour of everything they've seen, and lets her sit quietly until she moves closer. They watch a movie on Netflix, a romantic comedy about a young woman who sees a pair of best friends at exactly the same time and doesn't know which brought colour to her and the various hijinks that ensue, and she falls asleep on his shoulder. He feels her breath warm against his neck and the desperate desire to protect her warms in his chest.

It soon becomes apparent to him that it's not culturally acceptable to ask about someone's soulmate. He's not supposed to ask someone if they see colour, who it was that gave them that, whether someone has lost their colour again after a tragedy. Learning about the stories of his teammates is slow, tiny pinpricks of information gleaned over conversations after training, at night, over team dinners. Mr. Wilson saw in colour for a few years, but hasn't since his wingman in the military died. But he refuses to subscribe to the belief that there is only one perfect person for everybody, thinking that he just met one possible soulmate and there will be another one. Captain Rogers always looks particularly grim during those conversations.

He starts to forget the mystery of why he saw colour before he was truly alive. It's enough to see it, to appreciate it, to see Wanda wearing a new jumper and says, "That shade of red looks lovely on you, Wanda." To see her smile and tug the sleeves down over her ringed fingers, hair lighter than it was when he met her, her eyes still that same glowing green. She teaches him that he doesn't have to understand each other with her confessed lack of understanding of her own powers, her shushing him whenever she asks a rhetorical question about science and he tries to explain. The world is a more beautiful place when shrouded in magic and mystery - and there is nothing more magical or mysterious than his feelings for Wanda.

Colour stays with him even as his world falls apart. As he loses friends, watches news bulletins that flash Wanda's face across them when she's arrested, as he sits alone in the compound at the chessboard and stares at nothing. It's a time when the colours seem to fade, when his mind is barred up by a mist of sadness, and the colours only seem to brighten again after he finds a note hidden behind the coffee machine with his name on it. With an address and a tiny note written in Wanda's familiar slanted hand, obviously left there by Scott or Clint after they were placed in the compound for a few nights during their deal negotiations.

He goes to see her, and the colours of her overwhelm him almost immediately. She's changed her hair to a lighter brown, cut it short, curling around her jaw beneath a dark green baseball cap. Different colours now, her signature red too likely to get her caught, and she's so beautiful and bright, even when the air is heavy with early resentment. They talk in a park, half-hidden in bushes of bright flowers, and when she smiles for the first time he smiles back.

His colours are different when he sees her, the blonde hair and the pale skin, and when she smiles and he feels heat trace across his cheek her fingers trace the splash of pink on his skin, fascinated. Their eyes meet, in the quiet of a hotel room, and she tugs at the sleeves of her shirt - striped navy and white, knotted to show off a strip of pale skin above the waistband of her dark jeans - and meets his eyes. "Why have you never asked me when I started to see colour?"

"I learned it isn't polite to pry into someone's history with their soulmate," he says, and she sets her half-empty mug of tea down on the carpet between them. Perhaps it was once coloured, but now it's a murky grey, and she shifts on it to curl her bare feet beneath her and shift closer to him. "And I never know how to answer when people ask me. I've just...always seen it."

"Always?" she asks, and he nods. "So someone in the room the night you were...born-"

"I prefer created," he says, and she cracks a small smile.

"So we'll celebrate your creation day instead of your birthday, got it," she teases, and he smiles. "But someone in the room that night...they'd have to be your soulmate?"

"Not necessarily," he says. "I...saw colour before then. I remember it, just being this...conscious thing. And I didn't see black and white, I saw red and yellow and all these colours. It was always there for me." He glances at her, the seriousness in her eyes, and asks, "When _did_ you start to see colour?"

"The moment that I looked into your head while you were still in the cradle." He blinks at her in confusion, and she raises a hand before she hesitates. "Can I show you?" He nods, and she brings her hand to the mind stone, and he accepts the gentle press of her mind into his, of her memories mingling with his. He sees the world in black and white, as he's never seen it, and he sees the cradle he came from, sees Wanda's pale hands, laden in rings, creep across its lid. And the explosion of colour, the world painting itself bright, and then he's back in the hotel room, staring into her beautiful green eyes.

"You...I gave you colour?" he asks, and she nods, pulling her lower lip nervously between her teeth. "And...you gave it to me?"

"I guess I did," she says, stumbling over the middle of the sentence like she's choking up, and he stares at her for a long, silent moment. Then he jerks forward to close the distance between them and kiss her, cradling her face between his hands, and her arms fly around his neck and pull him close, months of pent-up emotions poured into a kiss that turns into wandering hands pulling at clothes, her smile a silken promise against his skin, the bed squeaking beneath them and her wrapped around him so tightly he can't tell where he ends and she begins.

Much later, so late that dawn is creeping a glowing finger across the horizon, he lies with her propped up on his chest, her fingers wandering an idle path down the plate of vibranium that crosses his chest, he asks her, "Why didn't you tell me sooner? That we're soulmates?"

"I...at first, I had a hard time coming to terms with it," she says, hand moving back up to prop her better on his chest, her hair falling forward against his skin, the sheet tangled around them both. "I looked in your head, and saw annihilation, then the world turned to colour. And I spent that whole day thinking this thing that would only bring destruction was meant for me, but then you...were created. And you're _you_. Then I didn't want to tell you because you...you didn't question the way the world is. And we were becoming friends, getting close, and I didn't...I didn't want you to feel pressured to be with me because we're soulmates." She looks up at him, gives a tiny bashful smile, and says, "I genuinely liked you. And I wanted you to genuinely like me, not just because the universe says it's meant to be."

"I do genuinely like you," he says, and she smiles so brightly he's overwhelmed. Leans up to kiss him again, and as the sun rises he loses himself in her.

Colour rules his life with her. When she dyes her hair red, and wears bright colours in the sun-drenched cities they frequent, and he buys her bouquets of flowers, and spends hours gazing at the green of her eyes. Every day he's overwhelmed by how beautiful she is, and every night she reminds him that it was her who brought him colour. He falls in love with her so slowly, and realises it in a stunning rush watching her skip stones across a loch in the Scottish Highlands, scarf tugged up around her mouth against the cold day.

She's wearing a grey beanie and a green checked coat, white trainers scuffed with mud and moss, and when she joins him sitting on a wide flat rock and pulls him in by his collar to kiss him he tries to imagine the words. Sees them standing out in every glowing colour in his mind, and vows that he'll say them to her the next time he visits. When he walks past a jewellery store and a red stone in a gold setting catches his eye, the band of the ring a slender golden braid, he buys it and slips it into the pocket of a black coat. Only to think later that buying a ring means he wants to keep her colour in his life forever.

If only he could. But it won't work out, and he finds himself asking her to destroy him, making the choice to die at the hands of the woman he loves. To make it peaceful, to not show pain, and to focus on her colours. The green of her eyes, the red of her hair and her uniform, the silver slick of tears on her cheeks. To speak the words he never told her before, to feel at peace with her knowing before he dies.

Then he knows confusion. Pain. Blackness. Oblivion. A slow climb through shades of grey back to the surface, into white light. And no colour, a world in black and white. He knows Mr. Stark's face, full of concern, knows Shuri hovering next to him, and the first words from his mouth come out caught in a sob. "Why can't I see colours?"

Mr. Stark and Shuri exchange a look, and he repeats it frantically. "Why can't I see _colours_?!"

"Vision, it's...oh God, it's hard to explain...what do you remember?" Mr. Stark stares at him, and he looks hollow and miserable, and a horrible jolt goes through him. "Thanos got them. All of the stones. And he...he snapped. Destroyed half the life in the universe."

A horrible chill drips down Vision's spine, and he sees Shuri turn her face away, her shoulders heave, when he pleads, "Where's Wanda?"

"I'm so sorry, Vision." He can't bring himself to look up, can't look at Mr. Stark's grey face, his ears ringing when he finally hears that solemn, "She didn't make it."

"No. No no no no no no _no_ it was supposed to be alright it was supposed to _work_ she was supposed to be _safe_-" He can't breathe, chest tight and panic crawling in him, and then Mr. Stark is far away, voice like he's underwater, urging him to take a deep breath and unclench and calm down, tugging him up from the wing and out onto the balcony and the air and the grim, grey world without Wanda.

It's been five years, he learns quickly. They revived him because they have a way to help, to go back to set the world right again, to bring back everyone they lost. He learns Mr. Stark has a child, a sweet little girl intrigued by Vision. Colonel Rhodes is seeing in colour brighter than before, and Vision watches his interactions with Captain Danvers in mourning, seeing his days with Wanda in their stilted dance around each other. He tries to pretend to muddle along with the team, but he's only enthusiastic about the plan for the slim chance he'll have Wanda back.

When they stand around waiting for Mr. Banner to snap the gauntlet, with his eyes still brightened by tears after Ms. Romanoff's death, Vision stares out at the empty shades of grey that make his world. He locks eyes with Mr. Barton for a moment, knows that he has seen in black and white too since his wife died in the Snap, and they exchange a respectful nod. Just the two of them desperately hoping for their soulmates back.

Mr. Banner snaps. The sound echoes around the room, and Mr. Lang is the first to pipe up, "Did it work?" Vision looks around desperately, and almost collapses when the world brightens to dull pastels. It slowly brightens, he can see the red patch on the breast of the bird outside, and he hears a wrecked sob from Mr. Barton, and looks around the shellshocked, silent room.

"It worked," he says, and every face brightens in hope.

Then the first missile hits the compound, and the world turns to chaos. The sounds of battle, smoke, Vision dragging Colonel Rhodes out of the bottom of the compound before he drowns in the water pouring in, forever looking. Waiting, hoping that this coloured world will bring her back to him, that he'll see her. Captain Rogers standing looking out over the battlefield, a single man facing down a war, and then the spark of yellow in the corner of Vision's eyes. Spinning softly gold, and then the familiar sound of Mr. Wilson's engines, and the field is flooded with reinforcements.

He starts to cry the moment he sees that familiar glow of red, sees _her_, Wanda landing with the Asgardians. But before he can run to her the battle is raging, and he's forced to fight, hearing a call overhead from Mr. Wilson of, "Glad you're back, buddy!" He can't pause to acknowledge him, pushing his way through the fray to get to Wanda.

She's fighting Thanos alone, throwing balls of bright crackling energy at him, and Thanos is glaring, raising his weapon to sweep her out of his way, no doubt to break her against one of the chunks of rock lying around. And Vision presses power into the new gem at his forehead, Shuri's creation to replace the mind stone, and leaps between the woman he loves and Thanos, snarling, "Get away from her."

The jet of hot power melts Thanos' weapon, and he growls and roars, "Rain fire!" to his allies. Bullets rain down on the battlefield, and a scarlet shield slams down over Vision to protect him, and he turns to face Wanda, her eyes wide and silvered with tears.

"Vizh?" She reaches for him, the power wrapped around her fingers tingling against his skin when she cups his face, and she lets out a sob. "Are you _real_?"

"I'm right here," he breathes, wrapping a hand around her waist, holding her close, drinking in the beautiful sight of her. "You brought my colour back."

"Oh _God_, I was so scared, I...I woke up right where I left you, right where you _died_, and I could see colour but I still...I thought I'd lost you," she says, words trailing off in a sob, and he pulls her tightly into his arms, burying his face in the crook of her neck, breathing her in. She's clutching at him so hard it hurts, but he welcomes it, welcomes the slight pain. It reminds him he's alive, she's alive, they're _together_.

"I love you," he breathes, and she pulls away from him, thumb brushing a tear gently away from his cheek.

"I love you too," she whispers, and launches herself into a kiss, and he pulls her so close her feet fly off the ground, just the two of them in their bubble of red in the centre of a battle. In a bright world, together.

"Hey!" They break apart at the yell, Mr. Barton sprinting full-force past them cradling the gauntlet beneath one arm, shouting, "We have bigger problems right now than reunion makeouts!"

Vision fights. He fights harder than he ever has before, because he has a future to fight for. It's right there on the battlefield, wrapped up in the magnificence of Wanda Maximoff, her hair and coat flying, so stunningly colourful amongst the smoke. When it's all over, when the field echoes with the distant sobs of their allies, when Colonel Rhodes and Ms. Potts are holding each other in the shadow of Mr. Stark's body, he finds her at the edge of it all. There's a crimson line of blood on her cheek, and her eyes are rimmed with red.

"I thought everything would be alright when we came back," she says quietly when he sits down next to her. "I thought...I know Nat died. But I thought this battle...I thought we could do it without losing anyone." She shifts on the rock she's sitting on, and she says, "I know I wasn't close to him...God knows there was no love lost between us, but I...I-"

"You don't have to explain your feelings to me," he says, and slides an arm gently around her. "I'm here, Wanda. No matter what." He kisses her temple, smooths a finger over the wound on her cheek to smear the blood away, and murmurs, "I love you."

She leans against him and sighs, and he pulls his cape around her, letting the silence settle over them. She doesn't say anything. She doesn't have to. It's enough to know that he brought her colour.

He will always see in colour. And she will too.


End file.
